How do I grow my community?

Gemeenschap
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I created a community https://corsairsoscorsairs.discourse.group/

What does the name imply to you ? How would you suggest to grow this community ?

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Who is the target audience here? What is the forum made for? Is it a product? A campaign?

When I saw the name I thought of ‘Corsairs of Umbar’ from LOTR. But maybe that’s just me.

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The name isn’t at all familiar to me, I’m afraid! Welcome to meta.

Your question is very broad—why don’t you start by telling us what you’ve done so far, what you have planned, and what specific challenges you are facing. That will give us context to answer in a more informed way.

If you want basic community building resources, I’d recommend visiting our blog and feverbee.com.

But if you want the long answer, here it is: The Community Lifecycle: From Launch to Legacy

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For me it tells it is just another ad/product based more than a community or discussion circle. Such wording is used for that purpose earlier. And I might hallucinate now, but I’m quite sure we have had here similar question year or two or something back.

My very weak point is image comes from audience, and if domain fullfills its purpose, what every it is, and target audience stop when seeing it, it is a great name.

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It’s empty?

Start filling it with lots and lots of relevant content and that will start to attract people from search.

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Thanks for bringing up that context. Maybe you could create this as the first topic in my newly created group ??

I mean, software is supposed to be for the users and not a marketable product for business houses​:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Thank you for sharing these two links. They’re invaluable.

I need to create a proper context. I am very much interested about Foss, and so l had joined FOSS United both on discourse as well as telegram. But because of my inquisitive nature, l got banned from their telegram groups. Moreover, l was turned away because my account on discourse was muted right since it was created, and after almost two days, my account was finally suspended. The reason that l was given was that l was constantly harrassing the members, whereas the fact is that l couldn’t type anything anywhere ever since l had created the account. I tried to get in touch with the admin team, which was shown to me as harassment.

Now, open source platforms are places where you better not come if you fear harassment. There cannot be any policing here. Being in such places are entirely your responsibilities. I mean, that’s the most uncomfortable truth. Later on l was told that Foss united caters to business houses big and small. In the world of open source, the users are a community, not a market.

And that’s why this weird name. We’re pirates. We live by piracy, since we can’t survive in the world of IPRs.

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This is pure discussion, in fact this is meant to be the Parliament House of Open Source communities. It’s supposed to create a lot of ruckus. Honestly l don’t understand where is it that you see a marketing strategy at work !! You might like to surf through FOSS United to see for yourself how Foss is being packaged and promoted​:laughing::laughing::laughing:

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You need to understand that l’m a non technical person. Of course, you don’t need to come from a technical background to create a community on discourse, but if someone learnt the meaning of a dashboard just yesterday, can you estimate the level of knowledge of such a person ??:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Excuse me. What? This makes no sense.

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I thought it was going be a forum about gaming and my pc ram

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Organisations like FOSS United have brought up charges of harassment against me to ostracize me. But such allegations make no sense on open source platforms.

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Why not ?? If your game is open source ???

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You are not a technical person, but you are the one creating the place. So it’s up to you to create examples of what you expect to happen there.

At the moment, it’s a bit like an empty field. You’ve created the field and put one thing in it, but people don’t yet know what you’re hoping will be built there. You probably have to start building a little of it yourself — not necessarily because you have all the answers, but to give people an idea of what kind of place this is supposed to become.

So I think the question to ask is: Why would someone want to join your forum?

This (quite old) blog post might also be a helpful resource: Building a Discourse Community

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@OS_Corsair It sounds like you haven’t got the finer details of your forum ironed out. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get a clearer view.

  1. Who is the audience? Creators of OSS software, or users?
  2. How is the forum organised? What sort of structure and categories are you looking for?
  3. Why would anyone come to your forum? If it serves as a replacement to FOSS United, what is the difference that creates a pull factor?
  4. How is it moderated? You said

so is it a lax moderation approach? Is it “organised chaos”?
5. How do you attract members? More of a build on Point 3, how do you want to attract FOSS enthusiasts? FOSS United have meetups for such people, have Hackathons and community events. Is that what you want to do as well? Others have mentioned this: you need to first start creating content. But then: what kind of content?
6. What exactly is the point? You said that I could post my first post as the first topic, which is seemingly irrelevant to OSS in general. Then, also games (it was actually about the Corsair gaming RAM). What is the connection? There needs to be aomething that ties them all together. Look at Meta for example. There are many categories here, all having different focuses. But what’s the central theme? Discourse. Likewise, because FOSS is such a big umbrella, it would be good if you had a particular aspect you want to focus on as well.

Just my thoughts, I’d be happy to hear yours.

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Neither did l know about that literary work nor that Corsair is a game before you mentioned both. But assuming that Corsair is an open source game, or any open source game can become an interesting topic for discussion in the forum. I’m going to create a game section.

As for your first topic, l’m going to create an off-topic section. It’s not directly relevant to OSS but the idea is connected. Now you tell me, who are those Corsairs of Umbar in that story ?? And what is Umbar ??? That point requires some discussion. If you put in your own inputs, people would get enlightened.

But l want more such discussions like this in my community.

Today’s an eclipse by the way, about 12 hours later from now. Which again, is not relevant :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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No no, that was not my point. You asked for what the name came to mind, so I told you. But that was just an offhand remark, with no relevance to FOSS.

It would be good if you can answer my, and other’s questions we have posed, so that we can better understand your goals for the forum. Otherwise, they’re really just shots in the dark.

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Target audience is anybody using the internet or even the computer for any purpose. It’s not a product certainly. Not quite a campaign. Simply a space where people can come and discuss their issues or even experiences.

I’ve just created a number of categories to give users a wider choice : security & privacy, off-topic inspired by your idea from literature, games inspired by someone who’s interested in gaming, and also news & reviews. Here you can even discuss about the various legislations being brought about in the usage of internet.